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A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

reneweconomy.com.au

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Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#251

Post by epistasis »

trashtester wrote: post #219
epistasis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to increase the amount of energy flowing through the grid, but there's plenty of excess grid capacity to accommodate that. The grid is a technological marvel, but one weakness about it is that it has never included storage except small amount of hydro (which I've heard some claim is because nuclear needed it so that the reactor could stay always on, but I have my doubts on that origin story) Without storag…

> Electrification has enormous potential to reduce grid cost, and overall energy cost, IMHO. This sounds a bit strange. I'm pretty sure that electric cars and replacing natural gas for heating will require quite significant investment in electric distribution infrastructure. Also, if you want to be able to transfer a significant fraction of power generated from wind and solar across the country, transmission capacity…

> This sounds a bit strange. I'm pretty sure that electric cars and replacing natural gas for heating will require quite significant investment in electric distribution infrastructure.

The total spend on grid infrastructure may increase, but storage will mean we will get more kWh per dollar of grid spending, lowering the energy cost.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#252

Post by wyager »

snek_case wrote: post #48
wyager wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature supe…

I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem, and dismiss the entire solution as if it was worthless, which is obviously false. As others have pointed out, there are now HVDC lines that can go over thousands of kilometers (transcontinental scale!) with reasonable losses. There's no reason to believe tha…

> I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it.

It mostly comes from understanding how power production and distribution works.

> Even if we "only" get to 90% renewables by 2045

90% renewables doesn't mean we get to cut 90% of fossil fuel production capacity, and it's almost impossible that we get to 90% renewables without taking serious quality-of-life hits (unless you're including nuclear).

> We aren't done innovating on the renewable front either.

Yeah, in 50 years it will probably be fine. But we're talking about now.

I'm also interested in the opportunity cost of switching to renewables. Maybe we can have the same quality of life we do now off of solar in 50 years, but almost certainly our quality of life would be significantly better if we weren't on solar.

The Kardashev scale is the best cheap proxy for quality of civilizational development.

> It will create a lot of jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

> Thankfully, the world is not only made up of cynics, and a lot of people already are.

Another word for "cynic" in this context is "person with realistic and accurately calibrated economic expectations".

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#253

Post by wyager »

theluketaylor wrote: post #31
wyager wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature supe…

Losses wouldn’t be bad with HVDC, with the added benefit of HVDC ties not needing to be frequency synced across the entire grid, so you have some opportunity to increase resiliency. I don’t think it’s a one-sized fits all solution. There will be places where storage will make sense, and other where longer distance transmission makes sense. I think the reality is it will be a mix of both, along with a nice diverse mix…

Great, let me know when we have economically viable HVDC grids built up.

Renewables enthusiasts love to talk about counterfactual or hypothetical scenarios, but ignore the fact that we can't spontaneously leap to one of those scenarios.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#254

Post by wyager »

theptip wrote: post #47
wyager wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature supe…

> Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Big “citation needed” on that assertion. HVDC is a widely proposed option and it’s an oversimplification to dismiss it with a single sentence. For example the old DeserTec made a feasibility analysis for HVDC interconnects across EU and into Africa; the problem with that one seemed to be more about geopolitical issues and upfront investment costs, rather tha…

> Big “citation needed” on that assertion.

My knowledge of power markets.

> HVDC is a widely proposed option

I'm sure it's widely proposed by fictional utopian scenario enthusiasts. I will consider it seriously when there's an actual HVDC grid we can use, or even just a successful HVDC interconnect.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#255

Post by wyager »

time_to_smile wrote: post #194
snek_case wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem, and dismiss the entire solution as if it was worthless, which is obviously false. As others have pointed out, there are now HVDC lines that can go over thousands of kilometers (transcontinental scale!) with reasonable losses. There's no reason to believe tha…

> I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it So far, we have never globally replaced fossil fuels with renewable energy, only supplemented their usage (meaning you can't point to a single drop of oil that is designated to never be extracted due to the creation of renewables). The energy required to build an electric car is massive and results in a lot of CO2 productio…

> The only surefire way to slow climate change is degrowth but this is literally a forbidden topic

It's not a forbidden topic - most people just understand that it's in some sense treasonous to human civilization (at least in the forms generally espoused by its proponents), so don't bother entertaining it.

> climate change will bring massive degrowth either way, and in a much worse way.

This is a fantastically unrealistic economic model.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#256

Post by janef0421 »

snek_case wrote: post #48
wyager wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transmission losses would eat any benefit, unfortunately. Of course, the author didn't model this at all. This is the problem with 99% of "actually we could totally rip out our entire infrastructure right now" posts - it's usually justified with crappy modeling that falls apart under slightly more scrutinizing consideration. Solar-only with low storage overhead might become more viable if we get room-temperature supe…

I see a lot of cynicism around renewable energy and electric cars and I frankly don't get it. The typical cynical approach is to point out one potential problem, and dismiss the entire solution as if it was worthless, which is obviously false. As others have pointed out, there are now HVDC lines that can go over thousands of kilometers (transcontinental scale!) with reasonable losses. There's no reason to believe tha…

People don't dismiss these things as solutions because of a single problem. They generally evaluate them on a holistic material basis and find them lacking. Then, when posting on the internet, they state their general opinion and cite what they consider the most significant and relevant issue, since comprehensively explaining their reasoning makes little sense in the context.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#257

Post by kickout »

nomel wrote: post #230
kickout wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your not only one, but we (society) have ruined far prettier landscapes for far less tangible economic benefits. Hardly _any_ prairie ecosystems exist in NA, and we pretty much built a dam on every river with a pulse, ruining countless landscapes.

> Hardly _any_ prairie ecosystems exist in NA To really understand this, open google maps and zoom in to any random point in the US, where you would expect a prairie. You'll see a farm.

Living in the Midwest… no need for Google maps. Both awe inspiring and sad at same time. Terraforming of the prairie.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#258

Post by tuatoru »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #214
theluketaylor wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If whole solar or wind farms find themselves sitting idle someone will drop off some containers nearby to split water into hydrogen or run a data center or something else that drinks power and skip the grid middle-man. Over-idle is not going to be a real issue; someone will always find a way to use of excess power.

Over idle already is a real issue. Who is going to build a hydrogen generator or data center with a 80% idle time, operating only 12-4 PM?

Anyone for whom the ROCE is better than 1% (per the given scenario).

I doubt that data centers will be built, but there are other uses beside hydrogen -> ammonia->urea. Desalination, for instance. Carbon capture, to make money in the carbon credit markets. Even at 4 hours a day, mechanical capture with plausible costs can compete with forests.

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#259

Post by galangalalgol »

pfdietz wrote: post #244
galangalalgol wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you build out enough capacity that the lowest wind conditions during nighttime in winter don't cause outages? I worry about distribution as the answer due to the vulnerability of our existing power distribution infrastructure. Do we have answers for that yet? We need them in any case I suppose unless you build out local storage to such an extent that you don't need any grid at all even in the coldest winter or ho…

You can back up the entire grid with combustion turbines burning hydrogen or some other e-fuel. A simple cycle combustion turbine power plant costs $500/kW, 20x cheaper than a nuclear plant ($10,000/kW).

Then don't you have to store the hydrogen somehow? Aren't we still working on that too?

Re: A near 100% renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage

#260

Post by 0xy »

thayne wrote: post #57

"in Australia" is an important qualification here. Australia has a very high ratio of available solar and wind energy to population. Not that getting Australia fully on renewables wouldn't be exciting. But it is definitely an easier target than say the US.

It's not even true "in Australia", given the South Australian government, famously pro-Tesla and pro-renewables, has been ramping up the production of NEW gas peaking plants and the refurbishment of old ones.

Australia is doubling down on gas. 100% renewables is the fever pipe dream of a delusional environmentalist who ignores gas in the renewables equation (renewables and gas go together hand-in-hand, because batteries aren't up to the job of smoothing supply across demand).

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